Imaging methods in transmission electron microscopy yielding maximum information for a given dose of incident electrons will be elucidated. The effect of plural electron scattering on phase contrast of which objects will be investigated for both instruments the fixed beam (FBEM) and the scanning transmission electron microscope. In the FBEM the filtering of the inelastically scattered electrons significantly improves the image quality of biological objects provided the filter does not introduce aberrations in the image. We have shown that imaging filters exist which are free of second-order aberrations. In the next steps we plan to calculate and design a corrected energy filter which can successfully be used in a high-resolution FBEM. Theoretical studies are in progress on beam broadening resulting from electron-electron interaction. These effects, which increase the energy width of the beam, may be diminished significantly if astigmatic instead of stigmatic crossovers are employed.